mercredi 12 novembre 2014

Blog - The sad story of NATO and the international institutions

The sad story of NATO and the international
institutions

“you are our vassals or our enemies.”

All of the
systems of global collective security, especially the UN, now lie in ruins,
except for paradoxically NATO. There are no longer any international security
guarantees at all and it is getting worse.With the surreal rise in NATO’s reach, scope and power just in the last
decade, it also comes at a time when the UN is rapidly losing any credibility on
the international scene. There were once
a time when multipolar methods were used, whether it was a succession of
shuttle flights of UN envoys or the deployment of UN Peacekeepers in strife-torn
places. Unipolar methods such as NATO’s intervention in Libya or that of the US
in Iraq are now the norm. In most cases, the UN structure has been sidestepped
or bullied. As Vladimir Putin said at the Valdai Discussion Club: “this
system’s ‘founding fathers’ had respect for each other, did not try to put the
squeeze on others, but attempted to reach agreements.” But now it has been
thrown into disarray particularly by the US.

The balance
of power has shifted mostly into NATO’s hands, which is reshaping the world
into its own US made, NATO endorsed format. This is not based on negotiations,
legal rulings, agreements but principally on dominance. The US, along with a group of allied countries, ("Euro-Atlantic Bloc"),
have gone as far as re-branding themselves as the “international community”, of
which NATO is a cornerstone. Article 5 of NATO is quoted like a mantra, but the
original context for it has lost complete meaning since the demise of the USSR
and the Warsaw Pact. But the NATO show of “collective security” has to go on.

Just this
week, NATO reported on “unusual”Russian military jets & bombers
over “Europe" with 19 Russian military aircraft ‘intercepted’, by NATO in one day alone. Of course, the press exploited this & went once more into panic mode. Many of the press failed to mention that the intercepts took place in
international airspace, no cause for alarm since this also was fairly routine even in the Cold War days. Before that, the media circus was about a “Russian submarine”
lurking in Swedish waters, and next week, who knows what it will be about. Everyone is looking around & finding a scary Russian tree, forgetting the equally intimidating forest that they are in. More Cold War rhetoric is added weekly to scare the
public by both NATO sources & the press.

In fact
most of the NATO inspired media frenzy can be best seen as a smokescreen. It
is in NATO’s genes to play fast & loose with warnings & briefings on
threats from the ‘east’ & ‘south’. The stuff that they never mention is the
nasty legacy that NATO leaves behind. NATO has intervened, under the guise of so
called “humanitarian bombing”, in places such as Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Afghanistan,
Libya & now to a certain & less visibly in Ukraine. It has left a trail of death,
destruction, bouts of lawlessness & human rights abuses in all of these
places.

Take for example the interview with Patrick Armstrong, former political counselor at the Canadian Embassy in Moscow:

“Mr. Kerry, a year
ago you were telling us that you were absolutely certain that the
Syrian government was using chemical weapons and that we had go
bomb it. Today you are now telling us that we should go bomb the
people that last year we would have been supporting. Please
explain, discuss.” We all saw the photos of the militia cavorting
in the US embassy swimming-pool in Tripoli. “Was armed NATO’s
intervention in Libya a good idea or bad idea? Discuss.” A month
ago we learned that the Kosovo Liberation Army that we supported
-indeed we gave the entire country to it 15 years ago - was in
fact a pretty nasty, criminal organization. Discuss."

Journalists in the pay of the
"Euro-Atlantic Bloc" masters won’t even try to dig deeper into NATO’s legacy, in fact
they often willingly take liberties with facts and ruthlessly trim to fit the
current "Euro-Atlantic Bloc" ideological bias. Russia wants to look after its own interests, but according to NATO , it is up to no good and it's on it doorstep. The reality is that NATO is in fact on Russia's doorstep; this is a blindspot for NATO leaders and unfortunately Russia serves as today’s EU bogeyman too.

Notes:

One noteworthy organisation that has effectively replaced UN peacekeeping missions, with mostly "ceasfire & disputes" monitoring is the OCSE. Recently, Lamberto Zannier, the OSCE’s secretary-general, talked about the conflict in Ukraine: “We are a civilian mission with a task that is
increasingly resembling a peacekeeping action, and operating in an
environment where there is constant exchange of fire.”